You know it’s been a bad year when Kyle Busch is ready to quit racing and go home.

“I'm more excited about this year being over than anything else in my entire life,” Busch said late in the year, after yet another potential victory got away.

Busch, who was used to running 70 or 80 races a year in NASCAR’s top three series—and winning a high percentage of them—cut back his schedule last season and suffered his worst year in recent memory.

After winning as many as 24 races (in 2008) across the three national series, Busch won just one race all of last year.

At least it was a Sprint Cup race—at Richmond in May. That was little consolation, however, after he suffered through a miserable summer stretch and missed the Chase for the Sprint Cup for just the third time in his career.

Despite finishing strong, Busch was ready to get out of Dodge when the season was over.

“It's been well documented that this has been the absolute worst year of my career, bar none,” he said.

“It's a huge disappointment. … I can't seem to put it all together when it matters, and you have to win this sport, otherwise you'll be kind of shown the door.”

Busch won’t be shown the door at Joe Gibbs Racing any time soon, but he will be trying to bounce back from one of the most disappointing seasons of his career.

Highlight: When you win 19 races in four years, winning can seem like old hat, especially at a track where you had won three of the past six. But looking back now, Busch’s victory on April 28 at Richmond was a big one—it was not only his only Cup victory of the season, it was his ONLY victory of the season.

Low point: After getting off to a slow start, Busch used the Richmond victory to jumpstart a streak of four straight top-five finishes to climb into the top 10 in points. And then disaster struck. Busch suffered three straight engine failures that knocked him out of the next three races. That not only dropped him to 12th in points, but sent his team spiraling. Though he still had a chance to make the Chase before a lackluster performance at Richmond in the final regular-season race, he wouldn’t have been in that position if not for the trio of engine failures.

When Busch led 302 laps at Dover yet finished seventh after running low on fuel, he had had it. Busch lost his temper and lashed out at Toyota Racing Development, which builds his Joe Gibbs Racing engines.

“Thank you TRD. (Expletive) us out of another one. Piece of (expletive) (expletive).”

Perhaps Busch had a right to be upset considering the three engine failures in June. He had to apologize to Toyota officials, but the incident exemplified his luck and his frustrations in 2012.

Outlook for 2013: Despite all the setbacks and bad luck, Busch was one of the hottest drivers on the circuit when the season ended. He finished in the top five in six of the 10 Chase races, including the final four. He also led the second-most laps in the series (1,436), including 428 in the final two races.

Despite all the frustrations, he looked like the old Kyle Busch again when the season ended.